Is There A Limit To How Long Hair Can Grow ... And 7 Other Hair Questions Answered

Why does your hair stop growing? How come your hair looks different when you travel?

Your hair has its own set of rules about health, and we spoke to experts to find the answers to common hair health questions so you can keep your locks beautiful and healthy.

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8 Hair Health Questions: Answered

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The important thing isn't necessarily how often you use heat on your hair; it's how hot that heat gets.
"If you use a hair dryer on very high heat, the temperature of the air coming out of it can cause something called 'bubble hair,' which is little bubbles on the inside of the hair shaft," explains George Cotsarelis, M.D., the director of the University of Pennsylvania Hair And Scalp Clinic. "The bubbles create a point of breakage and damage hair."
"It's better to decrease the frequency of heat styling if you can," says Meghan O'Brien, M.D., board-certified dermatologist at Sadick Dermatology and a consulting dermatologist for Physicians Formula. But she acknowledges that this sometimes isn't practical. If you're heat-styling, "always use products that offer thermal protection," says Luis Alvarez, the co-founder of Biomega and Aquage hair care products.

In a word: kinda. "Oily hair is determined by your genetics -- there are medications that can decrease the amount of oiliness (one is Acutane) -- but there's no topical treatment that will reduce the amount of oil you produce," says Cotsarelis.
If you have really oily hair, you should also wash your hair as frequently as possible to keep oiliness under control.

"You should be losing 50-100 hairs per day," says Peter Panagotacos, M.D., of HairDoc.com and head of dermatology at St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco. If you notice much more than that, or it's coming out in one spot, consult your dermatologist.
Lifestyle factors, like diet and stress, can affect hair loss, though other than a serious iron deficiency, your diet shouldn't affect your hair loss too much. Illness and aging are normal causes of shedding, says O'Brien.

Not without causing some damage along the way. "You can't really change your hair texture without damaging your hair," says O'Brien.
"There are a lot of products that can strengthen your hair, detangle your hair and volumize your hair," says Cotsarelis. "But to truly change your hair you have to do that chemically, which weakens your strands," he says.

Split ends, in short, are cause by aging. Your hair aging, specifically. "The end of a hair strand is the oldest part of the hair - hair usually grows out of the same follicle for four to six years, so the ends have been subject to years of washing, dying and damage," says Panagotacos.
"It's like a rope -- the ends are going to get frayed," he says.
"There's nothing you can really do once they've happened," says Cotsarelis. "You can coat the hair with product and make it look better, but you can't heal it except to cut it off," he explains.

"Humidity (or lack thereof) is the biggest factor that can affect your hair," says Alvarez.
You can try to prevent -- if you use a hair smoothing product before you go outside in humidity, that will help -- but "once you get that frizz, there's not much you can do," says O'Brien.

For some people, it's okay because it has to be okay -- their hair just needs a daily cleansing. And there are benefits to it, as it helps to get rid of dead hair, explains Cotsarelis. But if you can avoid doing it every day, it may be the better way to go.
"It's really a less-is-more thing," says O'Brien. "Especially with shampooing, it's the same as washing your skin often -- it dries the scalp out which can make it more prone to breakage and damage."
If you like to wash your hair every day, O'Brien recommends trying to take a weekend day off once per week.

There is, and it's different for everyone. "It depends how long your hair follicle stays in the growing stage," says Cotsarelis. "For your hair to be three feet long, it has to grow for six years. Some people have hair that does that, and some people's hair follicles go into a resting stage earlier than that," he says.
"The hair strands are meant to be two to three feet long," says Panagotacos. "They can get to four or five, and for some people they can only grow to one, but it's really rare."